So, I was sitting in the doctor’s office, answering a billion questions about this and that. “Describe the pain? Sharp? Dull? Stabbing?” blah blah blah The questions were many minutes long and I’d already answered them dozens of times for other doctors, so was in a sort of medical haze of boredom.

Then she says, “So after you have surgery to check for adhesions and lyse them if they are there (something that isn’t set in stone yet, by the way), if you still have pelvic pain, do you want a hysterectomy?”

I sat up.

“Excuse me?” This doctor was not a GYN, so it was an especially left-field question.

“Would you consider a hysterectomy?”

“Uh, I don’t think so. Why, again?”

“Well, when there’s undiagnosed pelvic pain, it’s pretty common to do a hysterectomy; that helps sometimes.”

I’m sure I snorted/stifled a laugh. “I do not think I want a Let’s-Hope-This-Works surgery. No, I want to keep my uterus, thanks.”

As I walked out, I couldn’t help but picture the game Operation… where the object of the game is to remove body parts without hitting the edges of the open incision. Was I the game’s patient? Was someone the scorekeeper, checking off body parts as they were excised from my body? Was the goal to keep removing things until I felt better?